Perhaps ironically, this is mocking a strawman. Flatpacks can be installed and managed using the terminal! Not only that but Linux-Distros have had graphical package managers for decades.

The primary reason that distros have embraced flatpack / snap / appimage is that they promise to lower the burden of managing software repositories. The primary reason that some users are mad is that these often don’t provide a good experience:

• they are often slower to install/start/run
• they have trouble integrating with the rest of the system (ignoring gtk/qt themes for example)
• they take a lot more space and bandwidth

Theoretically they are also more secure… But reality of that has also been questioned. Fine grained permissions are nice, but bundling libraries makes it hard to know what outdated libraries are running on the systems.

Your keyboard warrior skills are sharp…

Thanks.

We should not expect a handful of communities\states to bear the social and financial cost of housing homeless from other parts of the country just because they are attractive destinations.

It seems we have different concepts about where unhoused people come from. Are they coming from other states? Or are they losing housing while residing where they are?

This survey at least, would indicate the latter: https://sfstandard.com/2023/05/22/san-francisco-homeless-people-from-the-city/

The city that brought the case, Grants Pass, is not a fancy tourist destination (and isn’t really liberal). It is regularly below freezing in the winter, rains often, and is nowhere near a beach. Further, it has comparatively few resources for unhoused people. It’s mid-sized (40,000 or so) and it’s relatively isolated: why would an unhoused person go there to sleep on the street?

Classic example of a false equivalency fallacy. No one is violating the constitution or advocating for enslavement.

Did not mean to imply that they were equivalent. Just using an extreme example to show that the majority can be wrong, and that it is nonsense to base your morality on what is legal or what your able to do.

The case WAS made that penalizing people for sleeping in public spaces when they have nowhere else to go violates the 8th amendment; and while the majority of the supreme court did not agree, I maintain that is immoral and wrong to do so, and that a city choosing to do so would fall under “cruel and unusual punishment”, violating the US constitution.

It is a public health and safety hazard.

I totally agree. Communities should do something about this; but regardless of what they do it is going to take money away that could have been used on other things (schools and other services). Jail and police aren’t free. Shelter beds aren’t free.

How elitist of you to ignore the will of the people. You seem to want to impose your morality at the cost of other people’s communities.

Advocating for the humane treatment of others isn’t ignoring the will of the people. I’m not a czar and I’m not advocating for fascist policies. I’m saying that unhoused people are people; and they deserve to be treated with dignity, respect and empathy. Fining and jailing people who have nowhere else to go is immoral, regardless if people have voted to say that it’s okay.

I can sympathize with the homeless kid and hope they get help. But I will not put their welfare over the safety and education of my own.

How would helping this child be in conflict with the welfare for your children? In many states there are early childhood intervention programs basically for this exact issue.

There is a social cost to what you are proposing. Those communities and the people affected within them have found that cost to be too high.

You can either pay with money, or with the cost of having homeless children in your community. Putting unhoused people in jail costs money and is cruel. Building and running a shelter costs money. Leaving people on the street without any alternatives (as many cities have done) is horrible.

Of course, there is a percentage of people who you just can’t help, and for them it could be necessary to use a more heavy hand. But that’s mostly not what we’ve been discussing; which is, what should cities be allowed to do regardless of shelter beds or other alternatives?

Feel free to campaign to spend your local funds on the homeless rather than schools, parks, etc.

Obviously city budgets are a whole other can of worms, but to be clear, shelter beds are almost always cheaper than jail beds. The cheapest option would be not to put people in jail.

I’m merely pointing out each city and state has the right to set their own respective laws regulating the public commons

This isn’t a question of legality or ability! Obviously in the US it is now legal to fine and imprison people for sleeping in public spaces. This is a question of morality: is that law moral? Should we fine and imprison people for not being able to afford a roof over their heads?

If the majority that you respect gets together and votes to, idk, enslave a group of people and have them work on sugar plantations. That doesn’t mean their laws aren’t violating basic human rights, just because it’s legal.

If you travel to other countries you are often required to show that you have accommodations to stay and a return ticket. Otherwise they will not allow you to enter the country. So there is precedent for these types of laws.

What are you talking about? Unhoused people aren’t tourists. We’re talking about citizens of a country, the vast majority of whom were born and raised there.

The problem with vagrants has become such an issue that the public seeks a more restrictive approach. I prefer to respect the will of the public who live there annd experience the problem first hand over your sympathetic platitudes.

How kind of you to respect the will of the people denying the humanity of their fellow citizens… Are you saying you personally don’t have an opinion on the matter? Does homelessness not affect you?

NYC is a classic example of a US city where homelessness is less visible because they provide shelters and other public services. That is NOT to say that homelessness isn’t an issue there, it 100% is. Its just that it looks different than in, say, Seattle.

Europe (in general, though it varies) also has a large percentage of it’s homeless population sheltered.

I know it’s almost an oxymoron, but homeless is closely tied to housing prices.

If you lost your job how long would you be able to keep living where you are? Maybe a long time, but for maybe 10% of the population it’s a much shorter frame. Add on some other twists of fate (or bad planning): a medical emergency; an abusive spouse; an unplanned pregnancy; a substance abuse problem; and you have a concoction that could land you on the streets in a few months if not weeks.

The “free drug paraphernalia” (e.g. services to help save addicts lives) has followed the wave of addicts, not the other way around. People were dying long before they showed up.

Affordable housing, shelters, and housing first programs are the real keys to solving this. But there’s a lot of people who would rather eat their right arm than see a drug addict (or other undesirable) get government assistance.

This is about human rights vs. city spending

When someone posts about how unpleasant it is to see other humans sleeping/eating/pooping and concludes from that cities should be able to stop them (or throw them in jail) to make themselves feel better; the implication is that these people have alternatives and are just being rude or lazy.

I’m pointing out that many of these people are stuck and have no alternative. By appealing this case to the supreme court, Grants Pass (an city) was admitting that these people had no alternative and they still wanted to punish them.

The one basic rule that was upheld by the ninth circuit was that cities must first give them an alternative. If they have no alternatives, then it is cruel and unusual punishment. I don’t know how anyone can argue that it is not cruel to throw someone in jail for sleeping in their car (one of the plaintiffs was sleeping in her car) when they have no where else to go. People need to sleep: it is not a choice.

Additionally, large homeless encampments in other parts of the country has two main drivers:

1. In many cities, the majority of the homeless population is sheltered (there’s enough shelter beds). e.g. NYC
2. In other parts of the country (e.g. not any of the cities you mentioned) housing is more affordable, often because the population centers aren’t as large (see Wyoming)

Fuck. This. Conclusion.

Cities in the US have always been able to police sleeping in public spaces GIVEN there was an alternative (e.g. a non-full shelter) where people could go to instead. What changed with the new US supreme court ruling is that they are now allowed to do this regardless of weather or not there is any alternatives.

People need to sleep. It is a biological necessity. Homelessness is often not a choice, but can be temporary if the right resources are available.

How narcissistic do you have to be to think that the person you witnessed wanted to be there? Homelessness is out of control on the west-coast of the US (and elsewhere) but fines and jail time aren’t going to make these people magically stop existing.

Side note: Multiple studies have shown that homelessness is directly correlated to housing affordability. If you want to help fight homelessness, support building more affordable housing (which usually equates to denser housing).